Sunday, January 3, 2010

2010 emerges with huge settlements for 2 Black women

Respect and protect the Black woman

The Associated Press reported on New Year's Day that the family of an unarmed Black woman who was shot and killed by a white officer during a drug raid has settled their wrongful death suit against the City of Ohio for $2.5 million.

You might remember when this shooting occurred two years ago that what also enraged many was that 26-year-old Tarika Wilson was holding her one-year-old baby boy in her arms when Sgt. Joseph Chavalia shot her. Tarika's son was hit too, and had a finger amputated, the AP informed.

Chavalia was acquitted and is back at work, but not street patrol. Well the community there needs to be sure and monitor that because in Inglewood, California, an officer shot into a moving car, head on into the windshield, and killed someone he suspected of a shooting. Administrators put him on paid administrative leave and took him off the streets, but we found out it was a lie after he shot and killed a U.S. Postal worker before the other questionable shooting was ever complete.

Yes, pay up Ohio. Pay up to Tarika's six children, but know you can never pay for what you've taken from them.

And if I've seen this type of case once, I've seen it a thousand times. I used to work for civil rights and employment law attorneys and time after time, they fought ignorant managers, supervisors, CEOs, who could have done the right thing but didn't.

About two days before the news of the Wilson settlement broke, a judge in Nashville, Tennessee ordered Whirlpool, Corp. to pay more than $1 million to Carlota Freeman, a Black woman who was consistently sexually harassed and ultimately brutally beaten by a White co-worker because Whirlpool tolerated the harassment.

Freeman had complained over and over again to her supervisors that she felt threatened by Willie Baker, who taunted her with sexually explicit and racially charged statements. But they did nothing. Oh, I forgot. According to a story on blackamericaweb, a White supervisor ordered them to ignore each other. Then, this supervisor handled it by telling Freeman that she should just f*** her harasser and then he'd leave her alone.

WHAT???!!!?????

Ultimately, this stalker walked up to Freeman at work, punched her in the face and threatened her again. Now she has panic attacks, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, the judge found, and she can't do normal things like go grocery shopping or to church. Since it happened in 2004, the article continues, she's been in mental health treatment and her doctors believe she won't work again. She rarely leaves her house, when all she tried to do before was go to work and do her job.

The original settlement press release is at http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/12-29-09.cfm and more details on the harassment and assault is on blackamericaweb.com.

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Sis. Charlene @ KJLH Radio

As former producer of the Front Page, I got a daily, ring side seat to news and analysis from some of the most hard-hitting scholars our communities have produced, many you're already familiar with. The show features daily listener comments and questions and on Mondays, I produced the Next Page, a mini-feature on issues impacting our people, but that were buried in the news. .